L&D QuestionTime – Hayley Khan

With the recent announcement of the finalists of the 2018 Learning Awards and the ceremony taking place on Thursday evening, we conclude the awards series of L&D QuestionTime with Hayley Khan shortlisted in the Rising Star of The Year category.

In your opinion what is the biggest anxiety within the world of learning and development at the moment?

Being there when needed. Not as people, but as knowledge. We live in an ‘on demand’ culture and learning hasn’t escaped this. L&D professionals are pulled in different directions by individuals that expect the information to be there when they need and a business that wants to understand impact across the board. These two things don’t necessarily go hand in hand. The days of rolling our linear training programmes to full cohorts of learners with evaluation sheets at the end are numbered, but trying to juggle individual needs against the diverse operational priorities is challenging.

Who or what is informing your thinking around L&D?

You can read every article under the sun (and I do read some of them), but nothing replaces first line experience. As I have taken on different roles in Virtual College, I have always tried to stay close to our customers as they are really the ones living and breathing this industry. I am so lucky to work on really diverse projects and with a wide range subject matter experts, training professionals and learners. One day I can be scoping the implementation of the LMS to meet a wide range of professional and community learner needs within a local authority and the next working with subject matter experts on games based learning for a large scale corporate behaviour change programme, to be rolled out across 10 countries! Working in this way helps me see so many different sides of the industry and it really helps to broaden my thinking around L&D.

What is the most exciting innovation on the horizon for learning?

I think the way end users are consuming learning in their personal lives is incredibly exciting for the industry. L&D has been routed in the professional world for a long time, but everyday technologies such as YouTube and online forums is encouraging learning to happen casually, at the point of need. At the moment, professional and personal learning are kept separate, but as our technologies become more and more connected and data becomes more and more protected, learning records will shift ownership from being provided by the employer to being learner owned. This personal ownership will be at the heart of driving forward a culture of learning which is surely what we as L&D professionals are striving for?

What “game changers” would you like to see and why?

I work within learning technologies and it is a fast paced and exciting industry. I expected to write something about VR or AR when I first read this question, and I am sure these will go mainstream in L&D over the next few years. But are they really game changers? I think it depends how they are used. It is easy to get carried away by the ‘next big thing’ from a technology perspective and lose sight of the learning goals. Most of all, what I would like to see is for these new learning technologies being used in the best way to deliver the required content and outcomes for the organisation and end user. If not, the whole learning technology industry gets a bad name.

What do you think the world of L&D will look like by 2030?

I think our technology will be highly integrated, content curated from a wide range of sources and we will be hyper connected. I am sure personal assistants and holograms will be part of our everyday lives and all learning & development activities we consume, both formal and informal will be automatically recorded, analysed and suggestions made for our continuous improvement.

In time (maybe not quite in 2030), I am sure our personal assistants will know what we need to know before we do. I imagine a time when I am on my way to work and my AI assistant is telling me ‘you have a potentially difficult meeting around data compliance this afternoon. You last updated your knowledge 176 days ago. There are 3 changes. Would you like me to run through the key points of the legislation?’

What advice would you give your 21 year old self?

You have time.

I was in such a rush to start my career, buy a house and progress. If I could go back to 21, I would definitely do a Masters and maybe even a PhD. The learning experience at university was intense and wonderful and you have the opportunity and time to learn for learning sake.

I still love learning but right now my efforts are much more focused on learning that helps me and my team develop in role.

One day I’ll go back to study languages that I might only use once a year and I’ll indulge myself in discussing obscure literature, for no other reason than learning is a wonderful thing.

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